


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (season 10)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 20:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16960713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. How To Seduce Dean: Crowley edition (& 2x03 and 4x14)

After [rewatching 2x03](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/121684153588/spn-hellatus-rewatch-2x03-i-spaced-out-and) I made a throw-away comment about something that’s actually now worming its way into my head: Dean’s early interaction with Gordon in that episode seems remarkably like his seduction by Nick the siren in 4x14. This is all early to mid show stuff so there’s probably already someone somewhere who could have written this 6 years ago but on the other hand we have something from recent history to add to the discussion perhaps showing this was a warning that should have been heeded - Crowley of course ended up doing the exact same thing to Dean.

Lemme quickly run through the parallels with Gordon and Nick:

  * Both of them were the main point of tension for the episode - Nick was the MotW of course by being a monster, but Gordon’s introduced with the MotW style inversion of him hunting a vampire with the camera treating her as the victim (which gets put in doubt but eventually holds true)
  * It’s their killing that brings the Winchesters to town and start investigating, eventually getting Gordon/Nick to zero in on them having realised there are (other) hunters sniffing around
  * They both establish a working connection (hunter/FBI) which is at least true for Gordon; and Sam n Dean can’t exactly risk questioning Nick so of course Dean has to keep playing FBI in front of him, pretending to be in the same line of work for the duration of their “working relationship” (I suppose you could say they were both working at being fake FBI together :P)
  * (extra step in 2x03 of earning Gordon’s trust with the vampire kill while Nick went along easily)
  * Sam gets separated out (gets fed up of Dean n Gordon bonding over murdering things and wanders off to be kidnapped by vampires/stays behind at the hospital to get it on with the nice doctor) and specifically is interacting with the false lead for the episode (Lenore is not evil; Dr Roberts is not the siren which leads him to the answer or at least to the opposing view to Dean)
  * Meanwhile Gordon n Dean/Nick n Dean share drinks, talk, bond (over rather grimmer stuff about their hunting life for Gordon/about their taste in music for Nick)
  * They go from cautious of each other to working on the case together (when Sam comes back from being kidnapped by vampires, Dean n Gordon are leaning over a map discussing where the nest may be/Nick offers Dean a false lead with the flower and Dean invites him along on a stake out)
  * The twist after all this, when both are revealed to be bad news and the real conflict of the episode, is met with the same thing when it’s got too intense too quickly: suddenly backing waaay the hell off with an apparent no homo - Dean’s sudden dramatic bonding with Gordon has Sam accuse him of filling the hole John left behind/Nick tells Dean he’s going to be his brother now
  * Gordon was impressed with Dean after seeing his ruthless vampire kill, and spends time before and after the reveal emphasising how they are both killers; during their confrontation he stresses it again, saying Dean is a killer like him. Nick, of course, just magically corrupts Dean to want to kill Sam: his entire MO is making people kill pretty much for amusement since we don’t get any suggestion the siren feeds off the victims.
  * Both episodes involve a physical altercation between Sam n Dean over this interloper: Dean punches Sam for suggesting he’s filling the hole John left with Gordon/Nick makes them battle for his love



Don’t ask me how (I’m writing this with one eye shut against a migraine, my opinion is probably invalid :P) but I actually feel weirdly more optimistic about these two specific episodes being bi Dean subtext despite the dive behind the family thing now I’ve noticed their overlap? (Not that I doubted the siren one at all but I was initially laughing off Gordon as maybe a little bit of chemistry and a lot of wishful thinking on my part that I’d see bi Dean stuff everywhere, since I prefer to lean on narrative stuff and see what the storytelling suggests if I actually want to make a point.)

I mean obviously the surface level stuff for both episodes is all about familial relationships being top priority for Dean, way beyond romantic (your personal Destiel interpretation aside, romantic love has never played a real part in Dean’s life and definitely never for plot stuff).

But because they play along such similar lines then find it necessary to make the same duck and dive and the two episodes sort of play off each other there: the narrative similarity with the siren episode adds the overt sexual element that was not present in the Gordon episode but looking back you have the same pattern so you can see more clearly with this hindsight that there’s a direct narrative parallel where the actions in the later episode were a textual seduction, ergo there are elements in the earlier episode of this being a seduction  _narrative_  for Dean (possibly as a seduction to be a killer more than anything given the way the episode wrapped).

2x03 also sets up the template for how Dean bonds hard and fast with guys and by being a more thorough and prologued exploration of their relationship (I’m not measuring like for like screen time but Sam definitely  _felt_  like he was getting 50:50 screen time in Sex and Violence because of bouncing between the 2 threads playing off the false and real siren, while 2x03 was almost completely about Dean n Gordon), gives a more in depth example with more honest emotional bonding (talking about childhood and actual life and not playing up a false FBI persona for Nick) to back up the point everyone makes about how Dean was under no sort of control and knew nothing odd was going on until Nick did the thing with the flask. 

I feel like the fact his weak spot is getting too close to guys for whatever reason (family issues, suggested by the text), the reason doesn’t actually undermine the fact that these are other random guys who were not family who he bonded with very quickly from a standing start and they showed a great deal of interest in him, and valuing their attention was his weak spot. Gordon and Nick both validate Dean in their conversations, making him feel good about himself and we see him relaxing in a near-stranger’s company which is rare. If nothing else they both serve to illustrate that he craves male attention and validation and, brother or no, Nick recognised the same weak spot that Gordon only accidentally fitted into by being the wrong person at the wrong time for Dean to meet, and he at least deliberately used it by actively choosing the form and approach to seduce Dean.

* * *

And then you have Crowley. He did roughly the same thing over a whole season.

To quickly check off the plotline for 2x03/4x14 with Crowley winning Dean over:

  * he starts season 9 as the lurking monster in the Bunker’s dungeon as a present threat (though there wasn’t much tension about this tbh, at least in the viewer’s mind you had the idea he was going to get out eventually so wondered how)
  * on gaining his freedom in 9x10 he immediately comes to Dean with an offer of working together - there’s a few raised eyebrows about them doing a “hunt” together in 9x11
  * Sam of course is separated out for this episode, chillin’ with Cas in the bunker talking about sandwiches
  * Mother’s Little Helper is their proper bonding moment to parallel drinks with Gordon and the strip club with Nick (again without Sam; he’s chillin’ with a nun finding out about a dropped plotline - Abbadon was a false lead for the big bad of the season with Crowley taking that spot)
  * Crowley worms his way in to the point where they’re relying heavily on him and despite being antagonistic in Blade Runners, is somewhat on their side (more on Dean’s than Sam’s) in King of the Damned, and Dean outright calls him for help and works with him in 9x23
  * He gets in close to Dean, pushing the family aspect on the surface as a way of working his way in through the cracks in Dean’s shell, especially [trying to fill the John void](http://oranges8hands.tumblr.com/post/116408638028/post-10-17-fathers-the-good-the-bad-and-the) in season 9 and suggesting himself as a rival to Sam in season 10′s opening like he was filling the brother role too, so we have repeated instances of  him stressing that he’s filling a family connection to Dean that Dean was lacking, which is an ongoing theme, not a twist at the end… That meta I linked talks about how Crowley was a father figure doing double duty with his position as a lover (and just how skeevy it is to occupy multiple spaces like that :P)
  * Dean resurrects as a demon, and here Crowley succeeds with the seduction to violence, revealing an ace he had up his sleeve, and converting Dean wholly to the path of being evil and murdery. Of course, Crowley’s seduction of Dean wasn’t for shits and giggles, but he was trying to use Dean as a weapon to kill Abbadon, and then to have his own loyal Knight of Hell to fight for him. Crowley convinced Dean onto the fight, encouraged him to take the Mark, and made it his responsibility while Dean was a demon to feed the Mark and try and work Dean up to the role he envisioned for him.
  * this leads directly to demon!Dean going for Sam with a hammer, tying up Gordon’s comments that echo from season 2 about killing being in Dean’s blood (the Cain storyline) and Nick’s attempt to have Dean commit fratricide (uh, the Cain storyline… man, they really stick to themes over this show… :P)



The main difference, even to Sex and Violence, was that Dean/Crowley has somehow ended up the most borderline textual queer pairing for Dean ever in the show, with 10x01 suggesting that they’d “had a room” (paralleled to Ann-Marie and Dean, uh, having a room in a rather unambiguous way), the infamous triplets line, the usual innuendo in their back and forth ramped up to 11, and 10x02′s parting of the ways literally just coded as a break up (never mind Crowley’s ongoing pining and moping after).

I dunno, I’m really really tempted to apply this backwards and say that if Crowley working the same cracks in the armour to get to Dean was not just a seduction, but a seduction that in its steps paralleled these earlier ones, then why not say that due to the similarities in this narrative to the earlier ones, that certain weak spot Dean has that Gordon inadvertently got through and Nick openly exploited, has got a clear link to it also being about Dean’s interest in dudes? ;D


	2. Some Bed Meta From the Demon!Dean Days

> **[thestoryinsideme](http://thestoryinsideme.tumblr.com/)**  asked:
> 
> There's been some meta about the shot w/Cas in Dean's room where we see a shadow like image of Cas over the empty part of the bed (left of Dean). In 10.01 there's a similar shot with Crowley- he walks in on Dean & A.M. & Crowley's shadow is on the same side as in the Cas scene (left) except that Dean is also in that space. Do you think these are intended to be compared? What do you think it means that Dean is on the same side of the bed as Crowley? Why do you think Dean was on the left w/A.M?

* * *

So I went and re-watched all those instances of people looming over Dean and his bed, and my impression is that between Crowley in 9x23 and Cas in 10x03, there’s like… a sense of wrongs righted?

Crowley is double-intruding in 9x23. He’s sneaked in to steal Dean away, but he’s ducked a summoning to be there against Sam’s knowledge. Sam doesn’t know he’s there and wouldn’t want him doing it if he knew what exactly Crowley intended past the normal crossroads resurrection. Dean’s last scene when he was up and kicking was all “It’s making me into something I don’t want to be” and here’s Crowley to enact the final part of that transformation, so Dean wouldn’t want him to be there either. He’s also way too dead to give any sort of consent just about Crowley’s presence in his room, never mind anything else Crowley’s about to do to him.

Dean’s lying almost square in the middle of the bed against his previous inclination towards a particular side: he’s in a state of transition, with a tendency towards the wrong side of the bed. The way his body is laid out, he seems almost to be floating in the bed. Crowley intrudes and his shadow falls right over Dean. He’s about to exert his influence and gain (temporary) control.

By 10x01 Dean’s drifted right to the far side of the bed he’d normally pick: he’s transitioned to the thing he doesn’t want to be. However Crowley’s influence is waning: Dean’s right over on the far side and there’s just no way for the camera to catch Crowley’s shadow and Dean and the bed all at once: Crowley’s not placed over Dean except for across his feet, really. The fact that Dean is in Crowley’s bed, and the one having the fun in it, is great foreshadowing of their break up: Dean won’t let Crowley control him, Crowley can’t do anything about Dean’s behaviour, and it knocks him so off his usual perch he can only fluster about “Pants?” without any of his normal innuendo and suggestion he could have mustered if he were in his normal position. Think about him in Mother’s Little Helper looming over Dean from behind and purring stuff about being his mistress: he’s been thoroughly toppled from the position of sexual dominance in the relationship, even if Dean isn’t interested in Crowley in *that* way, there’s a sexual game going on and it’s probably part of why Crowley’s pining after him so badly. :P He’s always had a thing for people who got one over him - Bobby, his fondness for Kevin. Now Dean is right in the middle of a game with Crowley, and winning. In 10x02 their innuendo-laden banter includes Dean telling Crowley he sounds like a Viagra commercial: despite Crowley using the words to refer to Dean, the menacing sass definitely implies that Crowley is the impotent one… Maybe even calling him out on projecting which would be hilarious considering who is the biggest projector on the show. Crowley is impotent to control Dean and the use of the bed in their first interaction of the season already underscored this: all we had to do was wait for it to fall apart.

Further sense of wrongness comes with an instance of Crowley barging into the room without knocking (yes it’s his room but we don’t know that yet), and therefore another instance of intrusion on a private scene where Dean is in bed, albeit the subtle wrong-ness of him being on the left (and not touching Anne-Marie on-screen despite what they say about good sex). The shadow-over-the-bed shots of Crowley are right before the “Jerk” “Bitch” exchange: the most obvious bit of writing intended to unsettle the viewer and assure them this is definitely not Dean and to illustrate how wrong everything is about this. It shows again how Crowley is the “wrong” choice and the invader in Dean’s life.

So with the moment with Cas… Dean is human, back on his side of the bed, and he’s spread out on the bed, sitting up, fully dressed, and using the bed as a time for reflection and coming to terms. There’s a load of clutter to the side of his bed, blocking anyone from taking it.

Cas’s first move to get back into the position of rightness is to knock: we see Dean given a full moment to work out how he wants to be seen when whoever it is comes in the room (still headcanoning he was expecting Sam and that’s why he hid the photos). Cas knocking is new, but angels knocking isn’t - remember Gadreel barging in on Metatron being skeevy? “I gave you a second.” “You’re such an… angel sometimes.” Metatron meant about Gadreel taking it too literally, but there’s a sense of connection with this being the first time Cas knocks, and Dean needing a moment to hide the photos and compose himself. Think of all the hundreds of times Cas has popped up an inch from Dean’s face without warning. Cas knocks, and waits, and does the un-angelic thing here by only entering when explicitly invited. Despite having fresh grace, he’s still got a subtle influence of human things going on: new learned behaviours. He also quite likely starts the conversation with a brilliant Lord of the Rings reference.

He comes in and is then framed as the shadow across Dean’s bed in a way that even Crowley in 9x23 never managed: he fully covers half the bed: the half currently covered in random books and papers. It’s such a perfect bisection of the bed that as he stands there pretty much all the clutter is hidden from view. The close-up shot is even worse: the line of his sleeve in the shadow in the foreground neatly lines up to the edge of the pillow Dean is leaning on: even from a new angle, Cas is filling up the other side of the bed with his silhouette, respecting Dean’s boundaries and never overlapping Dean himself or his side of the bed as Crowley did.

The only thing left to add really is one more mention of Dean clearing off the side of the bed while they’re talking, because I’m going to take that one to my deathbed if this doesn’t go canon. :P “But Dean was clearing a space for Cas…” I’ll croak before expiring. It’s a silent visual of Dean making space in the area Cas’s shadow claimed: of opening up the space which was previously claimed.


	3. The Burger Date and Destiel Narrative Musings

In a head cold induced daze I’m just sitting staring out the window at work thinking about how Dean and Cas never see each other any more, and how ridiculously obvious that is.

And then they’re going to meet up next episode and have that conversation at the place with the burgers, and it’s like… all that time apart means absolutely nothing and they have this open conversation together… And Dean can open up to him still and give him this massive trust. And then you look back at their past and it’s SO patchy, like, they haven’t communicated easily and without Dean lying about something (the Mark) since Road Trip, and that was one brief moment after various episodes of Dean not telling Cas the whole truth for the opening of season 9 (hi Gadreel), which all follows on from season 8 where it was the other way around and Dean didn’t trust Cas for most of the season after Purgatory and basically right up until the last episode of the season.

And… then all the crap that came before that. That’s the foundation that conversation sits on.

Like who the hell would just sit around casually stealing burgers and making small talk about ketchup with that insane awful history.

And then they have this easy, open conversation which ranges from Cas being ridiculously supportive to Dean feeling Cas is someone he can trust to know how bad it is and to make that ask of him.

And… And just… The fact they’ve been so obviously apart, the fact the narrative has deliberately split them up and neither of them have been obviously thinking about the other or talking about the other or doing anything remotely connected to the other - Cas even picking for himself (for the first time yay free will) tasks to take on which in absolutely no way relate back to Dean like how even last season with his angel army decision that ended up confirmed to be because of Dean.

So they’ve made this massive gap in the narrative, they’ve deliberately stepped away from telling the epic love story of Cas and Dean for half a dozen episodes. They’ve let their story lines completely untwist from each other, because the MoC was always a story about Sam and Dean, with the Colette thing tacked on the end, separated from the main mythos of the Mark… (and maybe that’s why they’re having such a hard time researching how to fix this, because what happened to Cain in the way back ancient lore vs what happened to Cain in his own personal, more recent history is a very different thing that won’t be written anywhere - the grim awful story is the one written down, the one with the semi-hopeful way out is a living story which only exists between 3 characters at the moment, and, random foray into dating apps aside, Dean does not seem to be researching how to Colette his way out of it :P)

So this massive empty Dean/Cas-less gap in the narrative. Where all we get about them is, er, well, a reminding of the living story that previously only existed between us, outside the stated text (boring MoL research) of the show (we’re Cain in this metaphor), but then we told Dean about Destiel and now he’s clued into it. But like aside from that there was no *story* about it: no emotional drive to get him to Cas or get Cas to him like we’ve seen so many times, even before all this deliberate romance trope writing, but starting with searching for Cas in Purgatory has been their story over and over in recent years.

So the gap comes to an end with Dean and Cas back together, and they didn’t end up in that cafe because they’d been urgently searching for each other, or because, I assume, fate threw them together, or because any reason other than one of them reached out to the other (I think from vague PR spoilers Cas asks for their help with Claire so this is probably the machination that gets them to that cafe?). They’re literally just friends who are together in the same place for company and assistance, free to sit down and eat burgers together.

The point is (possibly :P)… the story didn’t put them together, not in the same way it’s done before. There was no story: no strong narrative hooks in each other. This is a sort of soft reboot of any story they tell together. The vague unsatisfactory way Cas walked out in 10x03 marked the end of the last story - not like the emotional ties were cut, but the way the plot shoved them together was. They became untethered from each other in the main plot because there was no obvious main arc which connected them together as there has been since Cas yanked Dean out of Hell.

Now the new narrative they’re starting is completely on their own terms, and it’s starting because the only remaining narrative hooks they have in each other are emotional ones, the things that tie them together across all these seasons and means that however much they lie or lose their faith in each other, they can soft reboot back to sitting in a cafe and immediately be on this strong emotional footing with each other.

The enormous Destiel-less gap was kind of awful as it unrolled because it is hard to watch them not interact even on the kind of level of missing each other while they’re gone we saw all through the last few seasons. But now we have this reconvening… It just serves to show the strength of what they have, that lets them go from 0 to 100 in the story. If the gap was meant to make Destiel less attractive, it would not end with this burger date scene. It would restart their relationship with tentative emotional rebuilding: the need to reestablish trust and even work out who the other is after so much time apart. It’s either lazy writing to have them instantly back together at their strongest levels of concern and openness, or it’s just more proof they can exist without each other, fine, but together they immediately have this strength of relationship.

And so Dean making that ask of Cas ends the vague dancing around of the MoC narrative being only about Sam and Dean, and brings Cas into it. The extra random 3rd character who’s not in the lore but has a massive part to play. Narratively, whether it’s going to go romantic or not, no matter what part Cas has to play, the burger date scene is the moment where Cas goes from concerned outside third party hovering around trying to tell Sam this is a problem, telling him to keep an eye on Dean, helicopter parenting the situation, to actually being drawn in and now having his own emotional stakes in it which are not just emotional (outside concern from Dean) but plot (now actively being tied into whatever action will happen, whether he remotely attempts to fulfil that promise to Dean or not).

Which means whatever happens… However the situation plays out overtly romantically or not, he’s officially achieved Colette status, in the sense of fitting the narrative Cain told us.

Like, that part at least isn’t up for debate. Dean’s given Cas the job of stopping him, and however he does it - even if he actually does, as Dean suggests, fling him into the sun, even if he does that, he’s just a dark Colette mirror because he stopped Dean. Even if he fails and dies in the process, he’s a sad Colette mirror. Even if he stops Dean with a lame dude bro platonic no homo move, he’s a lame dude bro platonic no homo mirror to Colette.

But like seriously that last one is actually the thing I’m least worried about given past form with these two when they get their emotions tangled in the plot. :P

This could have been a million percent more coherent but hey. There’s like 2 days to this episode where I’ll probably be proven hideously wrong about something as per usual, either I say this now or forever hold my peace and I’m too talkative to do that. :D


	4. Dean Vs Taylor Swift And Why He Has The “Performing Dean” Layer

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Hi! So this has been bugging me for awhile but do you think dean hides parts of his personality from Sam? Like for example when he geeks over things he would look at Sam and shut his mouth(Sin City?) and when he sings all out of love I think? Or with Donnie and the cake things? Like he wants to do this stuff but he feels like Sam wouldn't approve or something so he becomes this macho man again? Sorry for this horrible worded question, i just wanted to know if I'm the only one who feels this way!

 

* * *

 

Yeah, that feels like a pretty fundamental part of Dean’s personality - not just that he has a load of extra layers but that he keeps them from Sam as best he can. You’re far from the only one to think that! 

What gets me is that Sam is present for a great deal of these instances but never seems to put it all together properly - he still reacts in surprise when Dean willingly betrays his surface layer in front of him. :P

There was a lot of discussion of this over season 10 because the most regular plot thread was Dean’s unravelling personality and, increasingly, Sam’s fears about that as the driving force to the end of season awfulness… I’ll never find easy links because it was a season-long discussion and it’s all thrown into my gargantuan Dean tag or my episode tags which run to like 20 pages of posts on average by this point, but after pretty much every episode the meta community would tear into what happened with Dean’s yo-yoing characterisation and usually how Sam related to it. (I’m tagging this swiftie!Dean and Dean vs cake if you want to go through those tags on my blog for the best examples from season 10 :P) 

10x09 stands out in my memory not so much for general Dean characterisation, but because of the discussion of the story that they told Cas about Dean going to that club and getting drugged, and how Sam seemed to have a completely different idea of the emotional tone of the story because of their respective ages at the time. To stay in depressing John Winchester territory, in Bad Boys in season 9, Dean describes how Sam never found out about him going to Sonny’s as “the story became the story” - whatever John said at the time to explain why Dean dropped off the radar ended up being what Sam thought was true literally until the subject came up by chance in season 9 so he could otherwise have never found out. Jumping way back, in the Christmas episode in season 3 we see where tiny Dean eventually tells baby Sam (okay they were like 8 and 12 or something :P) about monsters being real, which is the most obvious example of keeping an aspect of their life hidden from Sam for years and years.

Generally Dean seems to hide the bigger stuff from Sam, to protect him physically (from monsters) or emotionally (from how terrible it was growing up hunting monsters) and that’s just spiralled on as his mindset through their whole lives, where Dean has a sort of duty, as he feels, to protect Sam from everything: within that is the sense that his hyper masculine surface layer is that of the protective big brother, and so cracks in that aren’t just revealing his own weakness (which, in his head, would extend to random things that are girly or sissy or whatever and betray that tough shell like music choice or food or, uh, certain delicate items of clothing, not just serious emotional stuff - basically anything that would generically be deemed unmanly by more judgemental society) but actively threatening Sam just because his shell is his role as a protector, not just for his own personal feelings, and so if it cracks it might not be strong enough or what is required to protect Sam. (I’m not saying this actually has any use in protecting Sam, just that this seems to be how Dean knows to do it and how he copes when Sam needs protecting - by giving over his very self to this role.)

He also has to let Sam know that he is the tough protector who can be trusted to look after him and keep him alive as an ongoing life-long hang up from their childhood and so it’s more important that Sam knows he’s this tough guy, and so Dean screens his own behaviour in front of Sam probably more than anyone except for he would have with John. A great deal of this also, aside from the more obvious comments literally about needing to protect him, comes across in projecting his own insecurities on Sam - all those times he’s teased him for being girly. It sort of is meant, I guess from Dean’s POV, to suggest he is more manly than all that and to sort of assert himself as tougher than Sam blah blah… My mental image of Dean in a lot of situations is him as a bird with the feathers all puffed up hopping around a bigger bird which is completely uninterested in paying any mind to his display of pretending to be the bigger bird. :P

This is also related to how we get the general impression Dean often will act more normally away from Sam or towards other people, and often why there seems to be a focus on Dean bonding with other characters more than Sam - new characters with fresh dynamics show Dean acting differently from how he would with Sam and let us see him in different light and frequently more relaxed moods. There are multiple points in the show where Dean is stressed from looking after Sam during particular spikes in Sam-related issues where Dean will crack open around someone else, even if it’s just, say, skipping out for a drink and getting some other form of human interaction away from Sam so that he can express how stressed he is, as he would never tell Sam that looking after him is a burden.

When it comes to opening up to Sam, though… Those gifsets with parallels where Dean is telling Sam to shut up/get in the car/shut up and get in the car when confronted with past love interests/”CasDean” are funny as a surface comparison, but Dean’s using the same reaction to Sam about women he was canonically romantically connected to where there wouldn’t technically be anything interesting to deny: even when there’s understandable emotion in the situation, he’ll chase Sam off from talking about it, and while we point out Dean is the greatest source of chick flick moments on the show, he is still the one always policing if they have emotional conversations where he can, and making big decisions to unload emotional things. For example, I recently watched Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, and Dean spends the entire episode (plus the preceding stretch of season 2) being clawed up by the probability of John’s deal, but even when Sam confronts him for being emotionally erratic in the middle of the episode he won’t talk it through. It’s only at the very end when they’re miles down the road (and in a different set of clothes so it could honestly be days later :P) he abruptly pulls over at a scenic spot on the side of the road to open up with his suspicions that he was brought back from the dead at the cost of John’s life. He only goes further to admit it was probably a demon deal in Crossroads Blues - again, they both had obviously contemplated the eventuality, but Dean would not discuss it until the case got overwhelming with the idea and it had to be discussed.

But Dean can also be a nerd upfront to Sam, when things seem less stressful. For example of two of his grander nerdy moments, he enjoyed dressing up and embracing being a dork in front of Sam in both Frontierland and LARP and the Real Girl, and, all things considered, mid season 6 and 8 were some of their less stressful times where nothing was actively wrong with Sam (he had the wall up against his hell visions and his soul back at that point in season 6, and the foreshadowing for the end of season 6 was only starting to sneak in around the edges and not yet something they had a great deal of cause to worry about. The LARP episode is in a pretty quiet stretch of plot right before they find the bunker and a few episodes away from Sam taking up the trials). In these cases goofing off and indulging his own interests and pleasures wasn’t dangerous or destabilising their power dynamic, which in times of stress, is much more emphasised as they go into a sort of survival mode of relating to each other, and they were acting more like normal brothers. Also from my rewatch, Hell House is the most dorky of dorky brother episodes, and comes right after Shadow, a stressful John-related episode but after which they voluntarily stop looking for him, and they’re sort of on vacation at that point, waiting for his say-so to rejoin the main plot, and so they get a goofy episode where they’re not emotionally beholden to the main plot in the same way on season 1′s much smaller scale, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence it’s one of the few times they really just screw around acting like completely normal brothers who just happen to get tangled up in paranormal happenings.

…

Apparently I have a lot to say on this. :P

But yeah, all the little instances through the show where Dean gets excited by something or likes someone because they capture his nerdy interest or any number of things, Sam is usually right there, and Dean will check his reaction against him every time, even if it’s just a subtle glance. Even the Taylor Swift thing I borrowed a gif for up there, Dean glances over at Sam first, and then clearly decides to carry on listening to Shake It Off  _despite_  Sam’s presence, making an active decision to embrace it in relation to Sam’s presence.


	5. "You pulled a Dean Winchester"

## “You pulled a Dean Winchester”

This line stuck out at me after all the talk after last episode where Charlie reminded Dean of his own name. Interpretations on how useful that advice was or not aside, I’m remembering one of the things from the pre-season PR they were saying about how Dean needed to learn to be a hero again.

The most striking thing about the amazing performance Dylan Everett put in was that he not only nailed acting as Dean, but he nailed acting as a Dean we haven’t seen for a while: normal, non-Marked Dean. Practically a folkloric hero himself in comparison to Dean still clawing himself out of the worst descent arc we’ve ever seen. Okay the bit with helping the lady with her dropped keys was excessive to show what a sweetie pie he was, but it drove home the point: I was getting a lot of early seasons Dean vibes off him as they returned to the house and he bravely went in alone to save the girl. 

So of course from the halfway point in the episode where Dean shows his bare arm and he and Sam grudgingly admit that staying 14 is a hell of an alternative to having the Mark, I was having a quiet meltdown over what would have to happen to make Dean take it back. Further meltdowns ensued when they very clearly and loudly laid out that it would be 100% Dean’s choice to adult himself up again: emphasising the element of choice in the matter.

But in the end it was a non-choice for Dean. He had to save everyone, as Sam says in that bit I stole the title quote from, and Dean did. What I find fascinating is that to save everyone, he willingly and without hesitation made the choice to become an adult again - and to take the Mark back on with about as much thought as he gave the matter the first time around before he knew the terms and conditions for the Mark. Because it wasn’t just about needing the sheer strength that being an adult again brought. It was about needing that darkness and the viciousness to pull it off: de-aged Dean didn’t have it in himself to do what he did, beyond the lack of physical size.

I think basically as soon as we heard the words Hansel and Gretel we knew there was going to be an oven, and once we saw the oven like, come on. There’s one way only that goes. And the witch happily talked about devouring countless children, so it’s not like this was a hard decision. Still, the framing of Dean overwhelming her and shoving her in is a pure dark!Dean expression on par with the face he pulled while stabbing Gadreel, and the execution of the kill was massively violent and terrifying to watch - his rage face and the brutality of the action was overwhelming enough to know that all the traces of sweetness that hung around de-aged Dean were gone again.

In the end then it was about Dean tapping into and using that darkness - and making the choice that it would be the best thing to save everyone at a massive cost to himself - which saved the day. Him stuffing the hexbag in the witch’s mouth before he burned her was as much sealing himself into his own self as it was about trapping the other de-aged kid into her new life. (He really didn’t have to do that… But her accepting her fate and finding things to embrace in being young again mirrors Dean possibly accepting his own life and what that all means for him.)

Considering something else Charlie said at the end of last episode, I wonder if this is an example of Dean finding some sort of balance: understanding that the rage and murder that lives inside him is a tool he can and will utilise if it means helping others - that utilising it is a very Dean Winchester thing to do which, as a kid without the Mark, he wasn’t whole enough to pull off. This episode showed that there was still the capacity for Dean to be like he was when he was young - that pure hero kid still lurks somewhere inside him, not exactly like light!Charlie but still innocent in his own way - but I found it a weirdly positive use of the darkness that lives in Dean now. We still want to find our way back to a Dean more like young!Dean, but this is a facet of him which can’t be removed entirely as it neuters his ability to save people.

One more point on the tickbox of speculation that Dean is never truly going to get rid of the influence of the Mark, but that there’s a balance he can find… And that that is still somehow inherently Dean, all the bad bundled up together with it.

* * *

 

I’m not sure I buy that Dean NEEDS to have the murderous rage to get the job done but this is interesting speculation ( [jellyfishline](http://tmblr.co/mNx73iaZlsN5A0Z7LGchiDg))

Yeah, I wasn’t sure about that point in a general context (I swear I’d be a walking disclaimer sign about everything I write that’s speculation if I didn’t think it would get annoying :P), but in the specific context of what happened in the episode it felt to me like this was how the conflict resolved. The rest after that was me wondering where that could take us… 

Your tags are making me think more about it, though. 

I’m still massively undecided about either what I want to see with Dean and the Mark or what I think they’ll give us. Based on the last couple of episodes balance seems like the key to something in the resolution of this arc so I was wondering if this was an example of the balance in action.

I’d definitely agree that up until the point of being the rage-fuelled Mark of Cain Dean, he never needed it to get the job done. I mean he has literally nine and a half seasons proving he’s awesome before that point. Dean up until that point definitely isn’t lacking or anything, but they stressed even before Dean took the Mark that there was a whole lot about him personally which was important to its power and the whole thing has been about what’s going on inside Dean and drawing out his darkness. I guess to try and focus down my point a bit better, this is sort of showing us how all of this is a part of Dean, and like Charlie last episode he’s not really complete without it, because it’s been in him all along ([I was reminded of the comparison to the demon blood storyline ](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/110071750913/i-saw-your-meta-on-dean-harnessing-his-darkness)earlier - which Charlie (inadvertently?) referenced last episode as well with that line right before her halves rejoined). Despite the Mark being new for the last season or so, what it’s powered by *isn’t*, so it really comes together that while he’s still got a malignant magical force stapled to his arm and it *is* corrupting him deep inside, there’s a sense I got from this episode that they’re already trying to reconcile the darkness within him with his lighter side, even before the Mark is officially dealt with.

(I’m not picking on your tags btw, just you made me aware of the implications of the original post and I totally agree that it sounds a bit dodgy re: Dean’s characterisation when you put it like that :P) 


	6. That Meta About Dean Being Metaphorically A Ghost I Had To Rush Into Production After 10x13 And Consequently Failed The Landing On And Haven’t Re-Written Since 10x23 To Make More Sense But Everything Up To And Including 10x13 Is Still Okay

## Dean as a Vengeful Ghost

Okay so 10x13 made this a really blatant metaphor to the point where it wasn’t even fun to guess at any more since it’s basically text, but I’ve actually been sitting on this one for like a year, and that episode finally pushed me to put this all together, if only to grumble that I was there first and the show stole my meta. 

 

~~It’s mostly just an exploration of the metaphor, and is the most bro-centric thing I’ll probably write BUT~~  fair warning if you’re not familiar with my stance on the Winchesters as a unit, literally the hypothesis of this is that Dean is haunting Sam specifically and that is a Bad Thing so if you romanticise pretty much anything clingy they’ve said to each other in Carver Era you’re not going to want to click the read more.

##  **Vengeful Ghosts:**

The show makes it pretty easy to work out their definition of a vengeful ghost in its own tropes and language: we’ve been seeing vengeful ghosts from the first episode. 

They’ve always tied metaphorically to the main story, not least because the boys are motivated constantly by new cycles of revenge any time their generic hero motivation flags. Dean in particular isn’t too far removed from Arya Stark muttering her list of names every night: many times when emotionally arguing for their further motivation Dean will throw in names of invariably dead people they need to keep on fighting for, and keeps a regularly updated shitlist of people to get revenge on (“Welcome to next time.”).

##  **Case Study:**

Though we get drabbles about how vengeful ghosts come to be from the start, we get a whole case study in Bobby’s arc after he dies.

We start with his death, and see how his entire life was a struggle against anger and losing control, or gaining it back through violence and/or accidental death: not just by what happened with his father but how he left off with Karen before she died (and HOW she died), and even Rufus’s re-introduction in Bobby’s death is through a case where he almost died because of Bobby (and their mysterious past hinted in season 6 where someone Rufus cared about died because of Bobby is in the background of their interactions after the hints of it in the episode where Rufus died). Obviously these themes of accidental death and injury surround vengeful ghosts; though many were serial killers, others only began a pattern of killing or harming people after their death.

(The ghost in 10x13 never killed anyone until after he was dead. The ghost in  _Bad Boys_  is a good example of another ghost pushed to harm entirely on a misguided sense of protection, and she never, presumably, killed anyone in life. Both were able to let go naturally though they had gone vengeful.)

Bobby doesn’t find being a ghost so bad at first, all things considered: he helps his adopted family, reconnects with an old friend, and begins to take advantage of his supernatural ghost powers to participate on regular MotW cases. But he has a rage button (Dick Roman), which, on their first encounter, causes him to lose control and accidentally break Charlie’s arm. 

From there he becomes much more single-minded about Dick and goes down a dark revenge path with the collateral damage rapidly increasing in both random bystanders being put in harm’s way and his family’s feelings. Finally he realises what he’s become - rather than let go like with some spirits - even vengeful ones like the one in 10x13 - that we’ve seen reach self-realisation, they have to burn the flask to release his spirit as his motivation for revenge was still very present while Dick was alive and he was unable to move past it. There are multiple ways for a vengeful spirit to be moved on in the show, and few of them go peacefully or willingly.

> SAM  
> It wasn’t your fault, Bobby – not really.
> 
> BOBBY  
> Right. That’s just what ghosts turn into. I really bet the farm I could outsmart that.
> 
> DEAN  
> So, what’s it feel like?
> 
> BOBBY  
> What? Going vengeful? It’s an itch you can’t scratch out. Look… I’m done. Go get Dick. But don’t do it ‘cause you think it’ll scratch the itch. Do it 'cause it’s the job. And when it’s your time… go.

##  **‘He hasn’t been right since he got back from Purgatory.’**

(Dean talking about Cas but hey I’m going to apply it to Dean instead.)

Dean and Cas both metaphorically die at the end of season 7. It half-counts on their death statistics… And importantly does 100% from Sam’s perspective while they’re out. Part of this whole metaphor only works as the  _perspective_  Sam and Dean have of each other, and I think it’s important to look at that, especially since with the start of Carver Era there was a lot of emphasis on how they see each other and relate to each other which sets off red flags from the start.

Sam has moved on, mourned Dean and attempted to build a new life - he may not have been coping perfectly and there are still arguments in the fandom going about why he stopped hunting, how right he was to do this, etc, but this is what he did.

Dean’s return is like the return of a ghost that destroys the attempt to move on with life and makes letting go impossible while they’re there. This is most notably illustrated in  _Death Takes A Holiday_ (4x15) where the presence of the dead boy’s spirit was specifically tied to the mother’s grief, and we saw her ‘recover’ from the grief caused by it immediately when the kid (heh, he was called Cole) moves on. Obviously she would still be sad and need more time to recover if we’d seen her whole story; no one instantly bounces back, but the actual presence of the boy in her life was making recovery  _impossible_.

In Sam and Dean’s case this is especially awkward because Dean is only metaphorically dead.

While neither Dean or Cas actually died, in many ways they did, not least because they both took a hard reset while they were gone. Cas comes back sort of metaphorically reborn, having been technically dead as a character we recognise since the end of season 6.

Dean was, meanwhile, metaphorically dying inside from whatever point you pick to begin his descent (e.g. anywhere from  _Faith_  or the first episode of season 2 through to losing Cas at the start of 7 as a final straw) until the end of 7 when he went to Purgatory and ‘died’. Dean is then metaphorically a ghost from the start of Carver Era onwards. (Cas has unfinished business too regarding his penance but despite that being a lot of his motivation early in Carver Era he doesn’t have the whole descent thing to go along with it, so isn’t heralded by ghost tropes.)

The beginning of season 8 sets Dean up as a ghost, explaining his ‘ghost motivation’ if you will - the thing that is still tying him to this world (what he came back for). Season 9 shows his path to vengefulness while season 10 is his vengeful stage and sets up how he might move on and let go.

##  **Ghost Tropes:**

Season 8 starts with Dean ‘manifesting’ in the woods (his moment of coming back to the land of the living). I’ve seen it discussed a lot about how the season opener was Dean as the monster, which has been a general theme for Dean seeing as it’s been non-stop descent for him since.

Sam had ditched the phones - Dean had trouble reaching out to him. They had no communication while Dean was ‘dead’ in Purgatory. You can compare Dean’s return and attempts to contact Sam with Bobby attempting to make himself known across multiple episodes in season 7, and also Kevin after his death until 9x14, AND Cas’s return from Purgatory in 8x07, all taking a long time to manifest fully, and struggling to make the first contact until physically present in the same room again.

The clearest timeline of events, taking into account the later Samelia flashbacks, is all that drama with Don happened, Sam was leaving anyway, and headed to the cabin for lack of a better place to go. There he was ambushed by Dean who had only just got back himself, with fate conspiring that it happened in the same span of time. Sam had no way of knowing how long Dean was there: we’re not actually told, and the fortuitous arrival is hand-waved despite Sam telling Dean he didn’t get his messages (part of a long-term theme of lack of communication focussed especially on the Winchesters through the Carver Era - in this case a lack of communication about lack of communication).

Sam returned to the cabin with no expectation of seeing Dean and, from his perspective, finds him haunting it: consider that last time they were there was saying goodbye to Bobby and seeing off the  _last_  vengeful ghost in the family. For Sam it’s one haunting to the next: Dean could literally have been dead and haunting the cabin the whole time, and on Sam’s return being ambushed by his supposedly dead brother would have that psychological effect, though he takes it on faith that it’s Dean returned in the flesh and all himself.

There’s a link with him just  _being_  there, with the cabin as their tentatively established season 7 base of operations, and with him having been continuing hunting (fighting in Purgatory, a distilled version of their MO) the whole time. Though he wasn’t actually at the cabin, he’s ‘haunting’ a place associated with hunting and Sam has returned to it as well - was he ready to jump back in after Amelia for lack of better things to do, symbolised by his own return to this place associated with their job, and would he have started hunting again anyway without Dean? Literally just rhetorical questions, sorry.

Dean, then…

##  **It all comes back to the family business:**

> DEAN  
> So you just turned tail on the family business.

> SAM  
> Nothing says “family” quite like the whole family being dead.

(8x01)

There is a link between Dean and the family business, hammered into your brain if you were unfortunate enough to marathon on DVDs that wouldn’t automatically skip the “THEN” in the early seasons.

CONTEXT FOR THAT ANNOYING SOUNDBITE BECAUSE CONTEXT IS IMPORTANT:

> SAM  
> Then let’s get these people back to town and let’s hit the road. Go find Dad. I mean, why are we still even here?

> DEAN  
> This is why.

> DEAN comes around to SAM’s front and holds up John’s journal.

> DEAN  
> This book. This is Dad’s single most valuable possession—everything he knows about every evil thing is in here. And he’s passed it on to us. I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. You know, saving people, hunting things. The family business.

> SAM shakes his head.

> SAM  
> That makes no sense. Why doesn’t he just—call us? Why doesn’t he—tell us what he wants, tell us where he is?

> DEAN  
> I dunno. But the way I see it, Dad’s giving us a job to do, and I intend to do it.

> SAM  
> Dean…no. I gotta find Dad. I gotta find Jessica’s killer. It’s the only thing I can think about.

(1x02)

No, but seriously: for Dean it is always much more about the ‘family’ business than it was for Sam. That soundbite (that Crowley reminds them of at the end of season 8 along with the actual callback to  _Wendigo_  in the cold open) was Dean pressing on Sam the importance of continuing the work in general, not following through with the A plot with no distractions (as Sam made clear he saw MotW episodes in season 1 and, it seems, often still does - as well as utilising them  _to_  distract Dean (e.g. in 10x12 when he wants Dean to stop mouldering in his room)). 

I think for ghost!Dean the link to the ‘family business’ is the most unfortunate part. It is frequently stressed throughout the show that hunting monsters in the abstract is his reason to continue; that he will continue doing it until he can’t any more (the opening stretch of MotW episodes in season 10, especially highlighted in the broment at the start of 10x05, stresses this can’t-stop-moving feeling in particular, along with the line about it being Dean’s peace that follows the ghost moving on in 10x13, but it’s a constant theme that has just been highlighted this season along with every aspect of Dean being put under the spotlight). 

##  **This makes the family business double with the ghost-related concept of _unfinished business_. **

His unfinished business is bound up in the ongoing never-ending family business, which, just like in the opening of season 1, Sam is dragged into by Dean’s arrival back in his normal life. Mirroring the start of their on-show relationship, Dean’s return as a ‘ghost’ in season 8 drags Sam back in identically, but this is the dark shadow of season 1 where Sam at least had motivation as drilled into him by John that avenging your blonde partner who dies in a white dress on the ceiling surrounded by fire requires grim pursuit - but Sam doesn’t have that motivation to continue this time (You could say he never bought into the ‘family business’ thing as season 1 in particular features frequent fall outs from Sam wanting to move on with the main plot and Dean focussing on the episode by episode hunt - circumstances continually roll on until the end of season 7 which is the first time he finds himself without a plot hook to force him to continue). 

Not to mention:

> DEAN  
> I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Sam, we have an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. We take Kevin to the tablet, he tells us the spell, we send every demon back to hell – forever. Every single bastard that destroyed our lives, killed our mother, killed Jess. And you’re not sure?

(8x01)

Actual Jess reference. From Dean, not Sam.

John drilled the general  _mindset_  of hunting and looking after Sam into Dean so his motivation to follow the family business is much more consistent as it hinges on an idea, not a person. While Sam is  _what_ Dean is specifically haunting (e.g. Sam = Bobby’s flask), the family business is  _how_  Dean is haunting.

While Bobby’s unfinished business was with Dick in particular: something to take vengeance against with a clear face and end point, Dean’s is much murkier and his rage button is not hunting in general, but anything that threatens the status quo of eternal mindless Monster of the Week hunting with his brother, emphasis on anything that hurts/kills Sam.

This callback Dean comes up with of people they need to be constantly avenging also emphasises Dean’s never-let-go mindset. Sam has moved on and loved again a couple of times since then (he expressly uses the word ‘love’ to relate to Amelia); never  _forgetting_  Jess but she is at rest to him.

##  **Just as Dean can’t let things even from that long ago that weren’t his battle rest, he can’t rest either.**

> SAM  
> Look, I’m not saying I’m bailing on you. I’m just saying make room for the possibility that we want different things. I mean, I want my time to count for something.

> DEAN  
> So, what we do doesn’t count?

(8x03)

This is also part of the ongoing language that suggests death/funerals surrounding them. People mostly use the language of their time ‘counting’ in reference to thoughts of their own mortality or imagining looking back on their life from the end of it. Saying someone else’s time counted is of course a common thing to say at funerals and in the memory of someone’s death.

Sam and Dean both have a different feeling what what ‘counts’ in their life, and Sam’s is something which can have resolution/end (and be an endgame): Dean’s trapped in an endless progression:

(a couple of lines earlier)

> SAM  
> Or… maybe you don’t need me. I mean, maybe you’re at your best hacking and slicing your way through all the world’s crap alone, not having to explain yourself to anybody.

Dean’s time can’t ‘count’ with a neat conclusion and end point because he can’t see a way to break the cycle of what they do. Purgatory was an endless cycle of killing monsters to no specific point except to kill them (at least after they found Cas), but while he was there he was at his ‘peace’ in a way with the purity of it representing his simplest mode of functioning. He had motivations within there but day to day it was just killing monsters. And as long as they exist he will ALWAYS have unfinished business (putting him in Purgatory where  _only_  monsters exist just highlights this).

> SAM  
> Look, it wasn’t like I was… just oblivious. I mean, I read the paper every day. I saw the weird stories… the kind of stuff we used to chase.

> DEAN  
> And you said what? “Not my problem”?

> SAM  
> Yes. And you know what? The world went on.

> DEAN  
> People died, Sam.

> SAM  
> People will always die, Dean. Or maybe another hunter took care of it. I don’t know, but the point is, for the first time, I realized that it wasn’t only up to me to stop it.

(8x01)

Sam has seen a way to break the cycle and mentally disassociate himself from the exact thing Dean can’t. His Amelia storyline served to show that the cycle  _can_  be broken, and though it was not perfect and he and Amelia mostly related  _because_  of how broken and messed up they both felt, they were on a healing path with Sam moving  _away_  from the exact cycle Dean is stuck in.

##  **That Time Dean Was Actually A Vengeful Ghost**

We actually did get to explore Dean-as-a-vengeful-ghost at the start of the Carver Era, in  _Southern Comfort_.

It forced the issue by giving people literal vengeful ghost equivalent motivations and actions while they were still up and kicking, and caused the first real list-based litany of grievances from Dean. These parts stand out regarding the discussion of vengeful ghost Dean and his haunting of Sam:

> DEAN  
> You should have looked for me when I was in Purgatory.

> DEAN  
> You never even wanted this life. Always blamed me for pulling you back into it.

> DEAN  
> Yeah, I might have lied, but I never once betrayed you. I never once left you to die. And for what, a girl? You left me to die for a girl?

(8x06)

The phrasing is “always blamed me for dragging you back into it”. 

That this is said as part of his forced vengefulness is interesting - though he’s passive aggressively blaming Sam for not wanting to continue hunting with him (see above: their misunderstandings about what the other wants from them and what they want for the other that doesn’t match up to what  _they_  want for themselves), the focus with this phrasing seems to be much more on WHY they are together, and what would be keeping Dean there if he was a literal ghost. That, for Dean, is Sam (and at this point we’ve already seen him come  _untethered_  when Sam is dead early in the show.)

If Sam is what is tethering Dean then hearing that what tethers him doesn’t seem to be an equivalent exchange where if Sam died he’d come back and haunt Dean (metaphorically or not I can’t even tell :P) upsets Dean. 

> DEAN  
> Benny has been more of a brother to me this past year than you’ve  _ever_  been! That’s right. Cas let me down. You let me down. The only person that hasn’t let me down is Benny.

(I’ll get to Benny. Also, worth noting where Dean puts Cas on this list, given the list Sam gives back to Dean in 8x23, AND the phrasing ‘let me down’ considering this is one episode before Cas comes back and Dean spends half of it harping on how he thinks HE let CAS down.)

He’s seeing Sam supposedly value him less than he values Sam, which is messed up and kind of inaccurate on many levels because Sam -

A: has his own massively unhealthy problems with his relationship with Dean as the end of the season will show when he picks Dean over fixing the universe as much as Dean picks Sam over it, plus it’s not like the stuff with Amelia was  _happy_  Sam, merely desperately trying to keep afloat and rediscover what normal is even meant to look like Sam. And -

B: Dean’s issues with Sam are all bound up with the enormous unfair burden that he had in being forced to raise Sam with all the responsibility a kid shouldn’t have had an how unhealthy being forced into a parental role to a sibling is etc etc, old argument, codependency is bad and so on.

##  **So who can actually let go?**

8x14 ( _Trial and Error_ ) also has some serious arguing about their roles and endgame which reflect their opinions: after the early season 8 fighting about what they’re in it for, Dean has actually developed his views and picked up hope for Sam getting out, but this seems to have brought out the side of him that still can’t see himself in the same position (and as with their season 9 fight, shades of not being able to let go of Sam to let him go live the normal life and Dean continue on alone come into it), so he assumes his only way out is burning up fast. (Don’t worry I’ll get to 10x16.)

The Trials are the first opportunity that comes along for him to burn out and as a bonus, they put an actual genuine end to their endless unfinished business, and leave the world safe for Sam to have this ending he imagines:

> SAM  
> So, what – you just up and decided it’s gonna be you?

> DEAN  
> I’m a grunt, Sam. You’re not. You’ve always been the brains of this operation.

> DEAN  
> And you told me yourself that you see a way out. You see a light at the end of this ugly-ass tunnel. I don’t. But I tell you what I do know – it’s that I’m gonna die with a gun in my hand. 'Cause that’s what I have waiting for me – that’s all I have waiting for me. I want you to get out. I want you to have a life – become a man of Letters, whatever. You, with a wife and kids and – and – and grandkids, living till you’re fat and bald and chugging Viagra – that is my perfect ending, and it’s the only one that I’m gonna get. So I’m gonna do these trials. I’m gonna do them alone – end of story. You’re staying here. I’m going out there. If landshark comes knocking, you call me. If you try to follow me, I’m gonna put a bullet in your damn leg.

[…]

> SAM  
> I want to slam hell shut, too, okay? But I want to survive it. I want to live, and so should you. You have friends up here, family. I mean, hell, you even got your own room now. You were right, okay? I see light at the end of this tunnel. And I’m sorry you don’t – I am. But it’s there. And if you come with me, I can take you to it.

> DEAN  
> Sam, be smart.

> SAM  
> I AM smart, and so are you. You’re not a grunt, Dean. You’re a genius – when it comes to lore, to – you’re the best damn hunter I have ever seen – better than me, better than dad. I believe in you, Dean. So, please – please believe in me, too.

Incidentally that last line is part of the Sam side of their endless issues which I’ll have to get to when I talk about 8x23 because Sam’s rebuttal is almost perfect until he gets to that point of not thinking Dean believes in him. We get less from Sam until it all comes bursting out at the end, but more than anything that one little line there underlines that, in fact, Sam is just as likely to end up haunting Dean as Dean is haunting Sam. I’m sure he’d be delighted to know.

##  **Breaking Charlie’s Arm pt. 1: the first step towards going vengeful.**

So Dean has his thing tying him to this world and not letting him move on: the ongoing never ending family business, and within that his rage button that can send him vengeful: his need to look after Sam and any threats to the tenuous stability that he finds in living out the endless pattern.

The back half of season 8 lays out how susceptible he is to going vengeful. (While I don’t think they were planning the Mark of Cain arc so early they were clearly setting Dean up for a descent, so thematically the building blocks are there, and the particular details of the Mark of Cain arc are just the picture they put on top of these established playing pieces).

Just like on Bobby’s arc, Dean’s descent is marked by someone ‘innocent’ getting hurt along the way.

##  **It’s time for Benny to die for the bro-dependency.**

I was discussing with [iwatchthepie](http://tmblr.co/mNVKHEcvz-Mgb2ySEuYpkNA) about them cutting the little bit in Dean and Benny’s final conversation in 8x19 about Benny slipping up and drinking people again and I wonder if part of that omission was for the sake of storytelling, not characters, making Benny all ‘beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure’.

Benny sacrificing himself had to look at least on the surface (before you go delving into the deleted scenes and decide to accept it as canon because come on it’s way more interesting for the  _characters_ ) like there was a clear argument Benny was somewhat undeserving of the fate and finding injustice that he  _had_  to die  _only_  because Dean needed to save Sam.

Though Benny is consistently written as not fitting in with the world any more pretty much immediately in his first proper episode, through the season up to this point it’s all angled towards sympathy and sadness on the thought that if Dean had spent more time with him and helped him consistently through the season instead of saying ‘Adios’ then it would never have come to it in the first place: because of Sam, Dean wasn’t there for Benny and his whole story is a failure from Dean’s side that would have probably lead to Benny’s death ANYWAY because of that. On the other hand making Dean the one to kill Benny to save Sam changes the dynamic enough that Benny has to be a clear victim in order to make him the more sympathetic one in order to highlight the toxic nature of what’s lead to this point.

##  **As an aside, on Sam vs Benny:**

I’m going to digress kind of for a second because an upcoming part of this takes a moment to talk about Gadreel, so I think this is important though perhaps not 100% relevant:

On Benny and Sam meeting for the first time there’s an interesting visual parallel: Sam and Benny go to shake hands but it is framed to show you that even as they shake, Sam is reaching for a knife with his left hand.

The Dean vs Gadreel handshake in 9x22 is a very similar situation, but with key differences: Dean extends his left hand to shake and has every intention of killing Gadreel as he reaches for the blade with his right. The hostility is less clear between Sam and Benny though it was a  _nearly_  fatal handshake; it had a path out the whole time and Sam wasn’t beyond reason unlike Dean in 9x22: he extends the normal hand for shaking.

(I have even heard vague ‘this is totally true’ facts somewhere about shaking right-handed to be BECAUSE it was the hand you’d hold a weapon in, so offering that one shows you don’t mean harm and was a sign of trust: Dean extending his left hand to Gadreel was a sign of zero trust and full intent to kill him unlike this situation with Sam and Benny).

Anyway Sam never goes to attack Benny because he looks to Dean first, who shakes his head no, but though they don’t meet again until Purgatory, it’s this dynamic that leads to Benny’s death. Sam doesn’t pull the knife and the death happens on Dean’s say-so, but he’s still kinda behind it. It’s not so much about Sam’s lack of trust in Benny - I was just interested that the scene gives us this moment where Dean judges Benny’s life to Sam in their first encounter, and then again  _for_  Sam in  _Taxi Driver_.

Benny’s death is the first big internal fracture Dean causes in himself. He’s only trying to protect and save Sam, but this being expressed through Benny having to die is part and parcel with the isolation they BOTH force on themselves earlier in the season in the double Amelia - Benny break up, where even when Benny is living Dean has to pick a ‘dead to me’ option to keep his status quo with Sam.

##  **Charlie is always a beam of sunshine:**

On the heels of showing the first ‘innocent’ mown down on the path to revenge (equivalent to Bobby breaking Charlie’s arm accidentally in his first moment of ghost priorities being too simple and violent), Charlie herself pops back up to give Dean a lesson on letting go.

Pac Man Fever contains a circular loop of hunting vampires (the family business, and a callback to Benny dying for it the previous episode by the specific choice of the monsters they mindlessly mow down - look at 10x08 and Dean saying all vampires are scum end of story) which can only be broken by letting go of the thing tying you to this world.

> CHARLIE  
> Okay. How?

> DEAN  
> I think the only way to stop this is to… not play.

> CHARLIE  
> What?! No, no. We gotta save them. Nut up, Winchester.

…

> CHARLIE  
> See? You can’t stop either.

(8x20)

It’s exactly a vengeful ghost story, and Charlie herself manages to let go and show Dean the way (her episodes always seem to be a best case scenario: managing to bind her light and dark halves in 10x12, or making out with the Cas mirror in LARP and the Real Girl, which foreshadowed the Crypt Scene heavily in its dramatic conclusion, minus the making out).  

> DEAN  
> Listen to me. This poison, it’s designed to put your mind into an endless cycle, while your insides turn to mush, okay, and its fuel is fear. Now call me crazy, but I think the only way to break the cycle is to let go of the fear and stop playing the game.

…

> CHARLIE  
> Gonna go by the hospital. Gotta let go, right? What about you, you’re gonna let it go?

> DEAN  
> Never.

In season 9, that fight in  _The Purge_ , Sam snaps and calls Dean out on keeping him alive at any cost saying specifically it’s because he’s scared to be alone. Not necessarily the whole truth: Dean’s biggest fear (at the time before  _himself_  being the one to potentially kill Sam is added to the mix) is revealed here. Sam’s death undermines the cycle he’s stuck in. Being able to let Sam go (in any respect) may be what breaks Dean out of the cycle, but hilariously the end of season 8 is now the light and easy version of this.

##  **Going Vengeful**

I did say this starts in season 9 but the obvious trigger is the events at the very end of 8x23.

Despite being given a path to take by Charlie which WOULD free him, Dean has already acknowledged what he’ll do in 8x23 before it happens and before Charlie ever accidentally shows him the better path; killing Benny was the rage button trigger - Sam needed saving and someone got hurt. It was inevitable the sacrifice would not be for nothing.

Did someone say  _Sacrifice_?

> DEAN  
> […] But I can’t do it without you.

> SAM  
> You can barely do it with me. I mean, you think I screw up everything I try. You think I need a chaperone, remember?

> SAM  
> No, it’s exactly what you meant. You want to know what I confessed in there? What my greatest sin was? It was how many times I let you down. I can’t do that again.

(8x23)

As I said about their conversation in 8x14, Sam keeps his side very bottled up, and aside from the slip up there, manages to soldier with constant assurances of how he’s absolutely fine while busy dying for the rest of the season up until this point.

> SAM  
> What happens when you’ve decided I can’t be trusted again? I mean, who are you gonna turn to next time instead of me? Another angel, another – another vampire? Do you have any idea what it feels like to watch your brother just –

> DEAN  
> Hold on, hold on! You seriously think that? Because none of it – none of it – is true. Listen, man, I know we’ve had our disagreements, okay? Hell, I know I’ve said some junk that set you back on your heels. But, Sammy…come on. I killed Benny to save you. I’m willing to let this bastard and all the sons of bitches that killed mom walk because of you. Don’t you dare think that there is anything, past or present, that I would put in front of you! It has never been like that, ever! I need you to see that. I’m begging you.

… TBH this part is mostly just me gathering evidence of Dean’s mindset and stuff which fits in. There’s a ton of meta to be found in here but all that really needs to be said is that this shows just  _how_  trapped the two of them are together, and this sequence of 8x23 - 9x01 has the first serious slant to how toxic this really is, as they collectively decide not to save the universe for each other - something they were once able to do at least in the moment that mattered in  _Swan Song_.

> SAM  
> How do I stop?

> DEAN  
> Just let it go.

At the end of 8x20 Charlie cutely asks Dean if he’s going to let it go referring to letting Sam die. When we finally get to that point, he uses their conversation to stop Sam: it’s the same phrasing which kind of almost doesn’t make sense in the context except to act as a callback to that time when Charlie and Dean talked about this very moment, and Dean was way more aware when it was Charlie’s problem and not his own (yet, though he was obviously thinking it given the comatose Sam in that dream) of the importance of doing just that. Given he uses the same phrasing to achieve the absolute opposite effect…

##  **Actually going vengeful in season 9**

> DEAN  
> Sam, listen to me. I made you a promise in that church. You and me, come whatever. Well, hell, if this ain’t whatever… But you got to let me in, man. You got to let me help. There ain’t no me if there ain’t no you.

(9x01)

Whether you believe this was figment!Dean based on Gadreel reading Sam and making up what he would need to hear, or actually Dean talking through Gadreel (I seriously lean towards Gadreel doing this but this is a totally different discussion :P) the intent is there: with a callback to the previous episode after the summer, we get this nice reminder of how horrendously tangled Sam and Dean are. In terms of ghost metaphors, once again we get the impression of Sam being the tether to Dean.

Given the wildly destructive to their relationship nature of what is occurring here, and how the consequences of this completely destroy Dean, this can’t be seen as healthy if you’re looking at the whole context and how this moment causes the spiral we’re still in.

The fallout of the Gadreel deception leads directly to Dean ending up on Cain’s doorstep and so begins the saga of all his inner darkness being brought out.

The people hurt along the way (Benny’s death, Sam’s possession, human!Cas’s homelessness, in chronological order) are all accidental victims of the haunting.

Now, though, Dean is going to be enabled to go actually vengeful, and the parallel to Bobby ends and we move into every other vengeful ghost we meet after they’ve started their random but consistently patterned killing: Bobby was moved on before he could enact his vengeance: specifically  _stopped_  from getting a shot at what was motivating him, and never killed anyone as a ghost.

Dean begins piling up a body count and it’s the open-ended nature of his vengeance that makes this such a dangerous trap for him.

Crowley sells it as a revenge mission to Dean against Abbadon. She killed Henry which sets off his generic family-wide rage button so there’s some actual vengeance there, yet Dean was already lost and looking for something to hurt before Crowley came to him and directed the anger.

Cain blatantly makes it personal with his kindred spirits thing and along with his combat challenge it does seem to be a lot more about unlocking something much larger in Dean. The whole fratricide thing plays into it from the start although Cain (as argued by [charlie-minion](http://tmblr.co/mvHEDmkc_NfLDy9FyiATojw) [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/111791998508/whos-crowleys-parallel) and [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/111792836378/screw-destiny)) is actually on exactly the same warpath against Abbadon as Dean is and she’s the last on his list and not actually on Dean’s at all, whatever vague last-season motivation he might have had for killing her.

##  **Gadreel is so important you guys.**

Each season of Carver Era in particular has a character who rolls into town just to emphasise the themes. It was Benny in season 8, it’s Cole in season 10. And Gadreel is the designated Season 9 Thematic Fall Guy. (I am wildly optimistic for Cole’s survival though, yay!)

Gadreel was described a lot in meta at the time (I got into fandom after 9x18 so this stands out) as a strong Dean mirror. Links like his car, some of the stuff he says to Dean along the way, most IMPORTANTLY his understanding of Dean’s emotional mindset and an empathy with it that he uses against him in  _Meta Fiction_  (hey remember when I said I thought the ‘ain’t no me’ Dean was a figment created by Gadreel?).

It all seals Dean and Gadreel together, especially with their lash out and wait to die moments. The entire season is Dean lashing out and waiting to die (remember what I wrote about him looking to burn out fast in 8x14 - at the end of the season his problem is more that it’s making him something he doesn’t want to be than the actual death - again in 10x09 Dean tells Cas it has to be death over a repeat of demon!Dean).

Gadreel is being influenced by Metatron like Crowley was to Dean, tying him to a cause he didn’t believe in: compare Gadreel bitchface to demon!Dean’s sass at Crowley in 10x01/02 (or generally any Dean looking at Crowley ever tbh).

(Also interesting to me after 10x14, is that Metatron was giving Gadreel an actual list of people to kill.

> METATRON  
> Here’s the first name on your to-do list.

(9x09)

This is way removed from any speculation on Cain’s list to Dean but it is worth noting that Gadreel was told to go kill someone there’s been serious speculation he was romantically linked to. I dunno, it’s a wild stretch but the point is Gadreel was both killing because he had been told to and lashing out wildly - compare the room of dead angels in  _Meta Fiction_ to the room of dead humans in 10x09. People were getting hurt on his mission - he was misguided and seeking personal redemption with the same level of intensity as a revenge mission. Him agreeing to work with Metatron can be paralleled to Dean taking the Mark.)

##  **So how does Gadreel tie into this?**

Cas corners Sam and asks him about Gadreel in 9x21 and we get SUPER INTERESTING language used about him:

> SAM  
> He didn’t possess me completely – more like we, uh… shared housing. I was still me.

> CASTIEL  
> Did you ever sense a presence?

> SAM  
> I don’t really know what I felt. I mean, maybe that I wasn’t completely alone.

> CASTIEL  
> Did you ever feel threatened?

> SAM  
> No. More that he… wasn’t at rest, l-like he had unfinished business. Now that we know more about him, I-I’d say he felt misunderstood.

(This one exchange set me off on this whole train of thought at the time of airing *claws face at how long it’s taken me to get to this*)

Every line Sam says blatantly paints Gadreel in the common sort of language used to talk about ghosts. It’s almost as overt as the parallel made of Dean being a vengeful ghost in 10x13, so I would say for BOTH characters the link is fairly explicit. The fact there are other links making Gadreel a mirror to Dean is just that much more interesting that they get hit with the same metaphor.

What is Gadreel’s unfinished business/tether? Though in  _Road Trip_  we learn about his backstory from two approaches (both his Biblical backstory and the show’s interpretation of it and a more recent emotional (romantic?) tie - hey I’m not looking at paralleling him to Cain or anything as well, shush) his arc is all about trying to redeem himself for, well, as Cas puts it, ruining the universe for everyone else. (Something Cas also seriously relates to, given Metatron got him in the exact same way in 8x22.)

Within the story, I think it’s more relevant emotionally about Sam. Gadreel haunts Sam and it’s not a coincidence that this language was used by Sam about him. Gadreel is angel possession and a valid link to Lucifer. Sam once again has to forcibly take control back from an angel that’s been let into him. It’s not just that Dean betrayed Sam’s consent or trust with the Zeke thing - it is that is mirrors the worst thing that ever happened to Sam - it takes him two whole seasons  _after_  the event to be clear of it, and season 8 is his first season without the knock on effect from being possessed by Lucifer factoring as a major influence on his life. And then in season 9 it’s happening all over again.

I swore this would not turn into a Gadreel meta so this is me biting my lip and forcing myself to stop writing about my favourite angel now I’ve laid out the very basic Gadreel as a vengeful ghost stuff. He stretches back into earlier seasons to bring the haunting specifically to Sam, and imagery associated with him relates to Dean after he takes the Mark and stretches into season 10.

##  **Demon!Dean, Season 10 and Breaking Charlie’s Arm Round 2.**

So, season 9 was all the descent, and the Mark mostly makes itself known in the lead up as a sickness/addiction metaphor. Dean gets his vengeance on Abbadon and discovers that it wasn’t specifically gunning for Abbadon that was what was going to satisfy him.

> DEAN  
> I can’t turn it off! Ever since I killed Abaddon, it’s – it’s like this whole…other thing. I get this high and I-I-I need to kill. I mean, I really, really need to kill.

(9x23)

He’s on an endless loop where there is no real satisfaction for his need for revenge, because his unfinished business is a Sisyphean task of ridding the world of evil and the Mark has now internalised that as a constant need to kill  _anything_.

Consistently through season 10 he tries to manage this by killing for purpose: demon!Dean won’t kill random jerks like Ann-Marie’s ex, people who he fights with like 2 separate bouncers, but WILL kill Lester and random demons Crowley throws at him.

The only ‘innocent’ demon!Dean goes after is Sam, and their conversation in 10x03 includes an attempt to rile  _himself_  up into putting Sam on the other side of some imaginary line.

> DEAN:  
> I know what you did when you went looking for me. I know how far you went. Crowley told me all about it. So let me ask you … which one of us is really a monster? Hmm?

After the cure Dean tries not to kill and then despite the alarming overkill in 10x06, manages to have a very civil alley brawl with Cole in 10x07 and pretends like there was nothing strange about killing all the vampires in 10x08.

You’d almost think he was doing great at managing the Mark and feeding it in drabbles until 10x09. I already referenced how the massacre parallels season 9′s vengeful ghost’s killing spree, as well as Dean’s words to Cas about taking him out at the Burger Date, but look at my face. Do I look like someone who skips the Burger Date?

> DEAN:  
> Cas, listen to me. There’s some stuff you just got to let go. Okay? The people you let down, the ones you can’t save … You got to forget about them. For your own good.

> CASTIEL:  
> Is that what you do?

> DEAN:  
> That’s the opposite of what I do. But I ain’t exactly a role model.

> CASTIEL:  
> That’s not true.

(10x09)

We have a little repeat of the “let go” theme Charlie set up for us in 8x20, along with Dean affirming he still can’t let go - he’s stuck in the cycle - and talking about people he can’t save may be an oblique Sam reference back to what he knows he SHOULD have done in 8x23, or a general reference to people who get killed on the job (remember that in 8x22 and 8x23 Crowley also used this against them as their extreme weak point).

Though, I dunno, thinking about learning to let go… talking things out with Cas. Being emotionally honest. Little things that could help him break out. OKAY I said I wasn’t going to be Destiel trash all over this any more than bleeding Gadreel feelings onto the page, so moving on.

One thing the Burger Date does is emphasise once again that at this point Dean thinks that death is the only way out for him to break the cycle.

And then just to make sure the metaphor is extremely clear, Dean breaks Charlie’s opposite arm to the one Bobby got broken, taking us in a full circle re: poor Charlie taking the damage but also was like my 100th nod from the universe I should start writing this, which I ignored.

##  **Moving on or being forced to go?**

10x13 is of course where we get our actual Dean-is-a-vengeful-ghost-this-is-a-metaphor-look-anvils moment:

> DEAN  
> Andrew, listen to me. You have every right to be pissed. But take it from me…the more you kill, the crazier you’ll get. The blood fuels the rage. So it looks like to me you’ve got two choices. You can keep killing and become something that you won’t recognize or you can move on cause that is the only thing that is gonna give you peace. So it’s up to you, man. Pain or peace.

WOAH. SO SUBTLE. OKAY.

What is more interesting on what comes out of this is that we’re now from this point being given ways for Dean to BREAK the cycle at long friggin’ last, and I was hesitant to say this before 10x16 but I’m now kinda yeah they won’t fix the codependency by the end of the season but we’ve got a break in the pattern. A life-long pattern which season 8 and 9 stomped harder into Dean than even the actual presence of John Winchester did.

(I name drop him since especially with the burn-the-journal conversation in 10x16, and the stuff in 10x13 itself ([here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/110800673698/larinah-larinah-larinah-so-i-just) and [here](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/110848388513) for good meta), along with a season-wide theme of poking at him for the “good” (in 10x09 - much discussed as revealing mostly Sam and Dean’s PERCEPTION of John rather than positive character traits) and the bad (demon!Dean talking in 10x03 and the song lyrics in 10x05) there is a serious theme with a pointed direction going on which of course ties right into this.)

So to make a ghost move on, here are the two basic methods which all ghost cases boil down to:

  * violently, by destroying their tether (I kind of agree with Cain on this one that that might not be the best choice for Dean’s mental health :P)
  * peacefully, by making them achieve self-realisation about the harm they are causing or what they have become 



(Interestingly in Bobby’s case he was made to stop ‘violently’ because he reached semi-self-realisation but couldn’t make the final step without someone else to push him to leave, as he was clinging on to his unfinished business.)

The conversation in 10x13 after Dean talks down the vengeful ghost is another case of a step forwards but a step back too.

> SAM  
> Looks like Andrew wasn’t the only one who chose peace.

> DEAN  
> Yeah. Looks like. I think I’m gonna follow his lead, too.

> SAM  
> What do you mean?

> DEAN  
> My peace is helping people. Working cases. That’s all I want to do.

> SAM  
> Is this about the Mark?

> DEAN  
> I’m done trying to find a cure, Sammy.

> SAM  
> Dean, Cas is so close.

[…]

> DEAN  
> No. No, I’m not just gonna give up. I appreciate the effort, okay? I do. But the answer is not out there. It’s with me. I need to be the one calling the shots here, okay? I can’t keep waking up every morning with this false hope. I got to know where I stand. Otherwise, I’m gonna lose my freakin’ mind. So I’m gonna fight it til I can’t fight it anymore. And when all is said and done… I’ll go down swinging.

Dean here has a healthier outlook compared to all the stuff at the beginning of season 8, where he is not equating hunting directly with Sam, and the phrasing is important: that it is about helping people, not the focus on hunting things - a step away from the focus on killing which specifically since the Mark, had become the focus of hunting for him, with the idea that the Mark could somehow be managed by just the regular killing that comes with the job.

At this point it is all wound up in fatalistic language as he fully expects to die soon, though two key conversations over the next few episodes prove that Dean has spent so long living with  _almost dead_  as his permanent mindset that confronting his mortality is not something he actually expects to go into head on.

Saying that he wants to hunt  _ad infinitum_ is part of his unfinished business, but not necessarily bad in itself: this conversation offers the hopeful side where he goes back to doing it for hero reasons and because it makes him happy, and importantly makes you consider him doing it for these reasons and not because of duty or vengeance or anything forced on him.

##  **So we have had one moment of self-realisation…**

The next comes with the sharp reminder of mortality (and there is a conversation across these 3 episodes which all link to each other so maybe hop back a few paragraphs to read all these quotes together in one go to see the story they’re telling about Dean)

> DEAN  
> We’ll cross that bridge when we c…  
> If we come to it.  
> You know last week, when I said that I would go down swinging when the time came? I meant that I was at peace with that. I just didn’t realize the time would come so soon, you know, like right now.  
> I’m scared, Sam.

(10x14)

> DEAN  
> What if I said I- I didn’t want to die? Yet. You know, that I wasn’t ready.

> FATHER DELANEY  
> Are you expecting to?

> DEAN  
> Always. You know, the life I live, the work I do, I pretty much just figured that’s all there was to me, ya know? Tear around and jam the key in the ignition and haul ass until I ran outta gas. I guess I just thought sooner or later I’d go out the same way that I live–pedal to the metal and that would be it.

> FATHER DELANEY  
> But now?

> DEAN  
> Now, um. Recent events, uh, made me think I might be closer to that than I really thought. And I don’t know, I mean, you know, there’s things, there’s people, feelings that I- I- I want to experience differently than I have before. Or maybe even for the first time.

([10x16](http://thefamousspannerintheworks.tumblr.com/post/114642538219/deans-confession-full))

Through this progression, Dean achieves another level of self-realisation: given I’ve been arguing he’s been symbolically dead the whole time, here he is realising that and wanting life instead.

For the first time he may not see the way out but to take it back to his despair in his own life expressed through season 8, dialogue mirrored just in 10x13 before his brush with death (and some have argued he symbolically died all over again in 10x14 when he killed Cain anyway and I’m like yeah what’s being symbolically dead one more time anyway), he is asking for more, and wishing that he could fill the remaining space in his life with something more.

Given how the emphasis all season when Dean is asked what he wants, it’s him saying to do what he’s already doing, pushing himself into working, falling into the pattern of his established unfinished business, and us  _seeing_  that on our screens so we know he’s been living that part of it, the obvious, surface part that everyone sees when they glance at the show:

> DEAN  
> It’s the, uh… The B.M. scene.

> MARIE!SAM  
> Saving people, hunting things. You know ? The family business.

> SAM   
> The… bowel movement scene ?

> DEAN  
> No ! Just… Shh !

> SIOBHAN!DEAN  
> You’re right, Sammy. Out on the road. Just the two of us.

> MARIE!SAM  
> The two of us against the world.

> SAM  
> What she said.

(10x05)

What the confession was, was Dean asking for  _more_. More time, to experience more things… feelings… people.

After the mid-season episodes, Dean was shown trying to make many improvements in his life through physical, outside means, while it was becoming clear that no amount of kale would fix the Mark or give him the strength to push past it.

Cain’s words to Dean in the battle in the barn were designed to kill all his hope, and before that it was clear he was struggling with the lack of time he had. On the other side he knows he is still dying, that the time is coming up fast, and with Cain’s words weighing on him, he is thinking of the people Cain has told him he will kill.

I went back and squished in space to talk about the Burger Date in this, which was not going to be remotely Destiel meta when I started, because that scene in itself does tie into the language that constantly comes up in the story of Dean not being able to let go anyway.

With this next step of self-realisation coming as part of a longer discussion just in this season about Dean’s struggle to deal with his unfinished business, I’m now honestly a little amazed to be able to tie that in there.

I think there are a lot more steps Dean needs to take to realising how to pull himself out of this, but I now have a feeling there’s a path being set up to how he might finally let go and move on and I’ve gone from gloomily prodding this idea in a pit of dark Dean feelings to flipping out since  _Paint it Black_.

There are a LOT of things that still need to be addressed along the way and Dean still needs to have the moment where he faces up to both the dark nature of his unfinished business and what is tying him to it, but with the hands on critique of John going on in the subtext, hints that Dean is looking for a way to ask for more and to re-evaluate his life in actual healthy terms, a recent trend of trying to pry the façade off Dean, and of course the fact the end of the season will have some  _serious_  conflict between the brothers, I’m actually… Feeling like there might be a path here.

What remains to be seen is the method by which vengeful ghost Dean will end up letting go and moving on.

* * *

Just as an amusing aside to wrap up, [iwatchthepie](http://tmblr.co/mNVKHEcvz-Mgb2ySEuYpkNA) said this when I was telling her about the confession scene part of the meta:

> Incidentally—I believe they call it “the veil of the confessional” when speaking of the traditional confidentiality of confessions. And huh, yes they do—both literally because of the veil that covers the screen, and figuratively.

So um that’s probably not a very applicable metaphor to my metaphor or anything. ;)


	7. The Plothole In Nebraska

> 1x12 - or, the (other) one with the pothole in Nebraska.

I ended up wheeze-laughing about this when I [re-watched Faith](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/120528596323/spn-hellatus-rewatch-1x12-or-the-moment-dean-n) because I was only a week on from 10x23′s airing or so. [11x01 brought it all back](http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/130753416208/deans-priorities-in-11x01-a-baby-b-the-baby), but there’s a surprisingly positive meta spin on it, elaborating from 10x23′s fandom consensus that they were consumed by the Darkness because they were stuck in a rut both literally and figuratively:

<http://yarnyfan.tumblr.com/post/130727238083/so-here-they-are-literally-stuck-in-a-rut-and>

> So here they are,  _literally_  stuck in a rut… and they can’t go anywhere if Dean just keeps on the way he’s going and Sam lets him do it. They only get to move forward after Dean becomes aware of the problem and actively takes a step to solve it.

We all like to go on and on about how Faith kickstarted so much for this show’s mythology, feel, and a great deal of the characterisation, from the later much more important struggles with faith the boys have to the starting of the Great Cycle Of Saving Each Other At All Costs with the unexpected collateral damage for Sam bringing Dean to the faith healer and a guy died to keep Dean ticking. 10x23 marked a particular low point where they really did get stuck in the rut, but 1x12 they, as you can see, skimmed through it without heed of the consequences. Now in 11x01 they had a serious conversation about the consequences and how not to get stuck in that rut again.

I would like to officially declare The Pothole from 10x23/11x01 the “third time’s the charm” example, and it all started back here. 


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